


when anger and vengeance collide

by supermatique



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2596907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supermatique/pseuds/supermatique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Root and Shaw, together and apart. A series of vignettes. Title is from one of <a href="jetgirl78.tumblr.com">jetgirl78</a>'s <a href="http://jetgirl78.tumblr.com/post/99423869194/your-tag-commentaries-on-person-of-interest-are-my-new">amazing meta posts</a>. Chapter titles are from “Dust Bowl III” by Other Lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The skyline has not been seen for many days

The ball bounces ineffectually against the door of the cage. The vibrations rattle the frame, shaking the lock against its chain. Root doesn't look up.

Bear hustles over with the enthusiasm that is entirely expected of him, scrabbling at the floor as the ball dribbles in every direction away from him. Shaw follows him with a grin, crouching as she watches Bear finally capture the ball in his mouth and chew on it a few experimental times before he turns and looks at her proudly.

“C'mon, boy,” she waves her hand at him. “Give it here.”

But Bear stays by the cage, huffing with the tennis ball getting more and more drenched in his mouth. Shaw pretends to be put out at having to actually go to him, but she scratches him behind the ears as she prises it out of his jaw. Bear refuses to let go, and the two of them end up wrestling one another, Bear's tail wagging furiously as he knocks Shaw to the ground with glee.

“I'm not sure which of you is the bigger puppy.”

Root is watching them now, one hand on her lap and the other holding half a deck of cards. She's got some form of solitaire laid out in front of her, the cards crowded on two sides by a stack of books and loose leaf. The cards are old, worn and dog-eared. They are so tattered that a few of them are almost drooping into two. Shaw hasn't seen them before. She didn't even know Finch kept anything other than books and more books in the library.

Root tilts her head and stares at Shaw, as if sizing her up. She puts the cards down and walks over slowly to the door of her cage, standing directly opposite Shaw. She presses herself up against the metal, hooks her fingers around the mesh.

“Do you think Harold will let you come in and play with me?” she asks, canting her hip so that it rests against the cage. She trails a finger down to where the lock is and gives it an experimental poke.

Shaw grins, baring her teeth. “Who says I'd wanna play?”

Gambolling by her feet, Bear huffs in agreement.

Root smiles. “We've had so much fun together. Surely you miss it as much as I do.”

“I'm not sure being tasered and zip-tied to a steering wheel is the best time a girl's ever shown me.”

Root pouts. Shadows cast over the wires cut crosses into her face. “It was nothing personal, Sameen. You must know that.”

“I know. Got you back, anyhow.” The bruise on Root's face is quickly fading, but at certain angles Shaw can admire her handiwork.

Reese appears in the doorway. “Finch has a number.”

Shaw smirks and brushes herself off as she gets to her feet. “Let's go.”

*

John gives her an odd look when she stops by a hole-in-the-wall games store and buys a pack of playing cards, but doesn't say anything. They're plastic acetate, the kind that won't bend or break. They look like they might make all right ninja stars if she needed some in a pinch.

Maybe she'll give it a try before she passes them on to Root. Maybe Root might even like to have a go.

Shaw catches her train of thought and promptly derails it.

Harold stares at the pack for a short while when she tosses them onto Root's dinner tray, but then simply straightens them next to the cutlery and leaves the kitchenette.

Shaw finds Root building a house of cards with them one day. The light coming from the window strikes dully off back of the third storey. Root looks up and the tower topples, scattering cards all over the floor. A couple slide out from underneath the cage.

It's the ace of clubs and one of the Jokers, bending at the waist in a short bow, levitating a handful of cards that spell out the brand of the deck. Root saunters up to Shaw, leans against the frame and ponders the scene.

“A war is coming, Sameen,” she says. “Which one will you be?”


	2. It feels as though we're never coming back here

A flashbulb memory.

_Where were you when Joss Carter died?_

It's impossible to be alone in this city.


	3. The line returns to dust

“Augusta.”

Root looks up. “Yes, Richard?”

“You don't have to go back, you know.”

She stares at her handler and tries to ignore the silence. It's everywhere these days, and she's painfully and acutely aware of how it lies in the pauses between words, the breaths between sentences, the wait between replies. When she's alone, it's a semi-colon hanging over her head, punctuating a conversation that has come to a halt on one end but has yet to be picked up by the other.

Richard takes it as hesitance. “Jack is ready—”

“Don't worry,” she says, cutting him off with a smile. It throws him, for her to appear so cheerful about this, and Root takes a small comfort in the fact that she can at least subvert someone's expectations, even if she doesn't care about him at all. “I want to.”

Richard puts a hand on her desk and returns her smile with a small one of his own. “Well, just be careful, okay?”

He thinks Augusta is still too inexperienced, too fresh to be thrown to the sharks like that. But he doesn't know. He thinks she's from Toledo.

.

The world is a seedy fog, the air dense with opium cloud and the dust of other drugs.

Root watches as the others cut up lines and lines of cocaine with credit cards and razor blades and watches the powder zip up their nostrils. They snort with a desperation, like it is their last, dying gasp, the end of worship at the altar of their chemical religion.

There's a new girl with them this time, and she is high, so very high. She has long, dark hair, and a waspish scowl on her face. She's little, too, built just like her, as she dances around the room in stumbling pirouettes, eyes closed.

She totter-dances her way to Root, crashing down on the couch. The seat rises and falls against her weight like an upholstered sea, the broken vinyl sending up pieces of foam stuffing as an offering. Her hand lands on Root's knee, her fingers walk up Root's thigh.

She feels reckless tonight, and for a short second Root entertains the notion. Then the girl hands Root a blade with a smile that ruins the fantasy. Root leans forward. She still feels like a junkie, sometimes. That night with Control feels like an age ago, now, but her blood remembers. It sings for the memory, thrums with the tremble and the pain and the pleasure.

She's reaching for the packet when the Machine reminds her about her heart, and Root wants to cut a vein instead of powder at the extraneous sound, to make sure this is real.

All this time and this is what their reunion sounds like.

Her heart rate picks up all on its own and Root feels a prickle run over her skin while She apologises for Her absence, reiterating the circumstance they are in. Root knows this all already, but the words soothe her.

_I have not forgotten you_ , is the message, and it's dangerous, which makes it all the more precious. Root lies back, her eyes shuttering in bliss, feeling as though she has already snorted every line into every capillary and every vein she holds in her fragile human body, as she listens to her god.


	4. Is there any way to get this weight off my skin

“She should know,” she says aloud in the empty room, standing at the table scratching at some peeling wood with her fingernail. She feels petulant, like a small child badgering a parent for not having delivered on a promise.

_Macy's... cosmetics... three P.M..._

Root smiles. She hadn't known, hadn't dared to know. “This is going to be so much fun.”


	5. And find another one

They fuck, fast and hard, in the ladies' room on the fourth floor.


	6. Is there anyone to get this writing off the walls

This is their favourite motel.

Coming here all the time would build a pattern like a map to their identities, but every now and then Root will pick out a code of colours at the makeup counter, and Shaw will know.

A sliver of light cuts through the drawn curtains, peering in like a witness. It divides the room in half. Particles float in the beam. Root is standing in the middle of the room, eyes closed, head tilted down. She has a drowsy smile on her face as she sways to some inaudible music, stepping neither here nor there in no discernable rhythm.

Shaw watches from the bed, legs crossed at the ankles and hands clasped behind her head. She can see their reflections in the vanity mirror attached to the dresser opposite. The room has trapped the afternoon's warmth, and the sheets tangle loosely amongst her naked limbs. Root is haphazardly wearing Shaw's dress.

“The Machine is teaching me how to dance,” Root tells her, as though speaking from inside a dream. “Would you like to learn how to dance?”

“I know how to dance.”

Then, despite herself: “What song is it?”

“ _At last_ ,” Root croons, “ _the skies above are blue... my heart was wrapped up in clover the night I looked at you—_ ”

Shaw is skeptical. “The Machine is playing you soul?”

Root twirls slowly around in a circle, sweeps her hair out of her face. Shaw imagines licking the bead of sweat off Root's neck. She moves forward so she's on her knees on the bed.

“ _I found a thrill I could put my cheek to..._ ”

Shaw gets off the mattress and goes to Root, who continues to sway to the Machine's music—? She steps up close and presses herself to Root's back, wrapping her right arm around Root's waist as she breathes in the scent of what they've already spent the better part of her lunch break doing. It is intoxicating. Root hums happily, trapping Shaw's hand under her own. Shaw's left hand wanders down and fingers the hem of her dress where it rests against Root's thigh.

“You have to go soon.”

Shaw doesn't answer. She draws up the hem, rucks the dress around Root's hips. They dance together slowly, deliberately, and Root's breath hitches when Shaw drags two fingers across the damp cloth of her underwear. She moves the crotch of the black lingerie aside, teases Root with her fingers. Root arches into her touch.

“And leave you like this?”

“I'm always wet for you, Sameen.” Root cants her hips, pushes down. “ _Please_.”

Shaw inhales sharply, bites down on Root's shoulder. Through the reflection in the mirror she sees Root's face, flushed and eyes closed, head tilted back as she bites her lip. Root takes Shaw's other hand, fumbles blindly with her in the heat between her legs. Shaw slips her fingers in and Root moans, half-turning in Shaw's arms to kiss her, hard and desperate. The dress is shed, quickly with the motivation of a deadline and the desperation of not knowing.

“Open your eyes,” Shaw says. “I want to watch you.”

In the mirror their gazes hold each other. The dance is forgotten now. Root braces herself with one hand on the dresser, unblinking as Shaw fucks her. The sound is slick and harsh, Root's breath quickening. There's a vague half-smile on her face and Shaw has the sudden urge to smother it away.

She moves forward, trapping Root's body against the edge of the dresser and braces her free hand on Root's other side. Root covers it with her own, twining their fingers together. She grinds against Shaw, grinds against her pelvis and the half-smile becomes a full smirk when Shaw gasps and arches forward in reply.

“Fuck,” Shaw groans, biting down on the tense cord of Root's shoulder. She slips another finger into Root, punctuating each thrust with a roll of her hips. Root is hot and tight, burning like a furnace as she clenches around Shaw's fingers. The dresser knocks against the wall, scuffing marks on the off-white wallpaper.

They will have bruises come the morning.

The light from before has moved with the sun, cutting across their bodies. It bathes Root's nipple in a strip of warmth. Root follows Shaw's line of sight and chuckles, takes Shaw's hand and moves it to her breast, kneading it in Shaw's gun-callused palm.

“Call in sick,” Root pants, as Shaw rolls and pinches the nipple into a hard pebble. Her skin is painted in sweat, eyes shining and hair matted. She's close. “Say you have a headache.”

Shaw stops cold. Her fingers are still inside. Root chases the movement before she realises what has happened, and she closes her eyes when she hears what she has said. When she opens them again Shaw's eyes are locked onto hers, but now they are intense and livid, tinged with what Root thinks is betrayal.

(It is not.)

“Sameen—”

“Shut up,” Shaw hisses, furious. She wrenches herself away from Root, picks up her discarded dress. She puts it on with shaking hands, closes the zip with trembling fingers. She licks Root off her fingers, wipes her down on the crumpled black. The movement is as dismissive as two strangers brushing past each other on a busy sidewalk.

Opening the door cuts the light in two, fracturing the room. The breeze shifts the curtain as it closes behind Shaw, leaving Root in darkness.

They have not asked to break the rules before.


	7. And find a new one

The rules are:

        1. They do not compromise their cover.


	8. The wind blows into the great unknown

Shaw answers the door, gun ready in her right hand. She relaxes only slightly when she sees it's Root on the other side.

“You shouldn't be here,” she says, tucking her gun back into the waistband of her pants.

Root takes off her shoulder bag, places it on the ground next to the door. “We'll be fine.”

“You don't know that,” Shaw argues. “Samaritan—”

“I don't want to talk about Samaritan.” Root moves to Shaw, so quickly that Shaw doesn't have time to react. She takes Shaw's face in her hands, kisses her with an urgency but so gently and softly that Shaw doesn't know if they really kissed at all.

“What are you doing?”

Root gives her a small smile. It's a smile chastising her for denying what's been going on between them all this time, the time they've spent apart but still thinking of each other, the push and pull they've played.

“Are you sure about this?” Shaw asks, because if they do this there's no going back.

“We were doing this a long time ago,” Root replies, pressing her nose against Shaw's cheek, giving her light Eskimo kisses, and Shaw trembles.

“I—” She pulls away, ducking out from Root's caress. “I don't know.”

“Sameen.” Root stares at her so helplessly, the disappointment playing over her face in a way that Shaw can only recognise because she has somehow learnt all the nuances of Root's expressions when she wasn't watching. This is dangerous. The Machine knows this. They will have nowhere to go, now, nowhere to run.

Shaw swallows. Root's expression is so tender and soft, and she takes it in like a strange weight in her chest. _You can feel_ , it reminds her. If they do this tonight—she'll never forget it. She'll want more, crave it, need it like a salve before she can move on. It will linger and she will find Root in her thoughts catching her off guard like a foreign hair woven into the fibres of her clothing, threaded in her blood, becoming something that her heart beats for and cannot forget.

It terrifies her.

“I don't know where She is, Shaw.” Root sounds so lost, so unlike the calming anchor Shaw has become used to having around. Here, stripped of Harold to challenge and John to tease, Root is herself stripped bare, untethered and naked in her confessional.

“Just give it time,” Shaw says, trying to convince herself almost as much as she is Root. “We've fought this far—”

“I don't hear Her like I used to,” Root blurts out. They're still standing so close. “Even before—She was always there. I could tell. But now... She's not there, Shaw. I can't feel Her. I can't feel the Machine.”

What can she say? She's never understood Root's relationship with the Machine, not really. But it isn't Root standing before her now—it's Sam Groves, and Shaw imagines this is how they were as young girls, one fresh without a father and one never with anyone at all, stranded in the quagmire of expectation.

“Please,” Root continues. She reaches for Shaw's hand, places it on her chest where Shaw can feel her heart beating, fluttering like a bird trapped in a cage of flesh and bone, frantic. “—I need you.”

And something inside Shaw cracks, like a hairline fracture on fine china. “Okay,” she relents, refusing to think about what Root's smile means to her. “But you can't stay.”

*

Shaw's apartment is a respectable studio on the Lower East Side, upgraded to after a couple of stints with Romeo. There's not much by way of decoration but it fits Sameen, the furniture and placement of it sparing and practical. The walls are bare but one is blue, a soothing baby shade that Root suspects accompanied the lease.

It's against this blue wall, next to a spot that's peeling off, that Root is pressed up to and Shaw is on her knees, unbuckling Root's belt and letting it fall to the floor with a soft clink. She lowers Root's pants and Root steps out of them one leg at a time, slowly, almost cautiously, as if they both know she'll break if they're not careful. Her underwear follows soon after, removed with a reverence that holds hostage the breath in her lungs.

If Shaw doesn't want to feel—or _can't_ feel—then can she at least feel this? Root's latched on to Shaw like a life raft off a slowly sinking ship, and sometimes her heart feels so full at the thought of Sameen that she can't imagine someone living without the richness of emotion.

“Please stop thinking,” Shaw begs, stroking Root's calf with a gentleness that belies her distress. Their eyes meet momentarily. Shaw looks away first, almost guiltily. Root swallows and lets her head fall back against the wall and fixes her gaze on the ceiling, a high tin finish in a waffle pattern. It's yellowed and flaking in some spots, pristine white in others.

Then Shaw's tongue is between her legs, flat against the length of her with a quiet desperation. The wet warmth that meets the heat already burning there is electricity through her blood. It roars through her ears and singes her flesh.

Root grasps fistfuls of Shaw's hair, leaves crescent marks in her shoulders. Shaw grabs Root's wrists in kind, bruising them and the jut of her hips as she strokes Root's clit, swirling the tip of her tongue over the hood and then painting a torturously slow path back down, alternately biting and sucking the inside of her thighs as she goes.

“Sameen,” Root gasps, and Shaw moans against her, fingernails digging into the backs of her thighs.

They push and pull like they do outside in the real world, outside of this vacuum of pleasure against the blue wall in Shaw's apartment. Shaw moves fast then slow, pulling away just when Root rides the painful edge of orgasm and can't hold back any longer. She presses Root against the wall with a wretched and renewed determination, curling two fingers deep inside as she scrapes her teeth along the edge of Root's clit, her touch so feather light that it carries a cool brush of air against the hyper-sensitive flesh.

Root's knees buckle when she comes, and she crumples to the ground. Shaw catches her, cradles her as if she were a fledgling unsure of flight. She carefully wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and Root sees her own wetness mixed in with Shaw's saliva, glistening against Shaw's skin.

When her breathing evens, she finds her feet, but Shaw catches her wrist before she can pull herself upright. Shaw refuses to look at her, even as she firmly tugs Root back down to the floor.

They stay where they are, then, spent; Shaw sits with her back to the wall and her arm wrapped tight around Root's waist, her lips pressed to the curve of Root's shoulder. Her mouth is warm and soft, her kiss possessive.

She hadn't thought it would feel like this, heart stuttering and starved of oxygen, asphyxiating itself as it lurches, crippled, from beat to beat.


	9. We're on our way, we're on our way

Romeo jumps into the front seat, and Chris and Tate dive into the back, throwing the duffels down on the floor of the van.

Shaw drives.

It's all she knows, now.

*

The boys give her her cut, and they split.

“Until next time, Sameen,” Romeo grins, and Shaw grimaces. It doesn't sound right if it's anyone else saying her name.


	10. Is there any way to get this weight off my skin

She and Reese stop off at this hole in the wall 24-hour diner that serves seventeen kinds of pancakes and the greasiest burgers canola oil has ever dripped out of.

They sit across from each other, beneath the lazy twirl of an overhead fan, next to the flickering of a neon red bulb. Reese leans back in his chair and watches with disinterest and mild repulsion as Shaw tucks into her plate with gusto.

The waitress brings him a cup of coffee. Black, that's been sitting in the percolator for too long. He thanks her anyway.

“Wanna fry?”

Reese recoils slightly and shakes his head.

“You should eat something,” Shaw says, around a mouthful of beef and lettuce.

“I'm fine.”

Shaw shrugs more nonchalantly than she actually feels. Mustard trickles down her chin and she catches it with her tongue.

Reese is trying to sit still in his chair, but he is as antsy as she is. She's always hated waiting, navigating the merciless interval between preparation and action. Next stop is the subway, the underground one that Root is preparing to destroy completely if they are compromised.

Harold will be heartbroken, but he's a soldier now, always has been, really. He will get over it.

Fusco can't come tonight, they're at war. They have two factions now, Elias and the NYPD, Dominic and Greer in a battle of wits with Samaritan as the overlord.

This could be the end.

They are hours away from the end and she's somehow thinking about the steak that is better than sex, that if they make it out of this alive, the first point of order is to go to St Louis before it's too late.

“Root was a data entry assistant this morning,” Reese says, casually and unexpectedly. He's playing with the handle of his coffee mug, studying the chipped ceramic of the white lip.

“And she was a stagehand last week. What's your point?”

“I'm just saying. Things are changing pretty quickly. Maybe...”

“What?” she snaps.

Reese shrugs, mouth turned down like it's uncomfortable for him to just say. “Maybe Root needs to know there's a constant.”

The flickering red reflects dully off the oil on her plate, intermittent and steady. The Machine watches with the same unwavering light. The Machine.

“She has the Machine.”

“She needs you, Shaw,” Reese says forcefully, and immediately looks away, adjusting the fit of his coat as he shifts awkwardly in his chair.

Shaw shakes her head. Her appetite is gone.

She hears Reese's phone vibrate in his pocket and Reese sits up a little bit, taps his earpiece. “I'm here, Finch,” he says, but it's Root on the other end—he utters her name in surprise.

The burger is forgotten as Shaw watches Reese listen to Root. She can't read his expression. The conversation is over in less than thirty seconds.

“What is it?”

“They're ready,” Reese tells her, standing abruptly and dropping enough cash on the table to cover a tip and more. “Let's go.”


End file.
